When we saw the Internet coming in the spring of 1994, we decided to abandon all the things we were trying to do with Java and focus on applying it to the Net. Supercharging browsers became our new mission … Netscape is really important to our strategy, so we are going to help it become successful, and they are going to do the same for us.
Predictor: Joy, Bill
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article in Wired magazine, Anthony B. Perkins writes about Internet synergy between Sun Microsytems and Netscape, quoting Bill Joy of Sun. Perkins writes: ”I am projecting that another huge winner in the Internet market is going to be Sun Microsystems. While Sun has continued to dominate the workstation market and has seen its stock climb from $43 to $62 per share from the end of July to the end of August, the buzz around the company’s corporate campus concerns Sun’s new Java programming language software for the Web. Bill Joy has pushed his Java team into creating what appears to be the de facto Internet programming standard for the new era. ‘When we saw the Internet coming in the spring of 1994, we decided to abandon all the things we were trying to do with Java and focus on applying it to the Net. Supercharging browsers became our new mission,’ gushes Joy. Even Netscape president Marc Andreessen admits that ‘Java is as revolutionary as the Web.’ Andreessen is right in extolling the virtues of Java. You see, Bill Joy woke up to the Internet opportunity right around the time Jim Clark teamed up with Andreessen to start Netscape. Clark recruited Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield and Byers’ general partner and Sun board member John Doerr as an investor. In the classic Valley inside deal, Doerr got Netscape and Sun together, and now both companies work very closely. Netscape is beginning to bundle Java with every new version of its browser. ‘Netscape is really important to our strategy, so we are going to help it become successful, and they are going to do the same for us,’ says Joy.”
Biography:Bill Joy served as chief of technical strategy at Sun Microsystems, a position he held in the 1990s, from the founding of days of the company in 1982. (Technology Developer/Administrator.)
Date of prediction: November 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Language/Interface/Software
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Netscape? Wake Up and Smell the Java
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive//3.11/money.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Edwards, Elizabeth